So you have a product and you want to do something with it. Maybe you actually want to start a company anyway, or maybe going commercial is the only effective way to get the product out there for people to use. Eventually you are going to have to face the inevitable and prepare something resembling a business plan.

For me making the business plan was something I entered into with great dislike. I hired a string of people to do as much of it for me as humanly possible. I regarded it as a useless document ... after all Google didn't have a business plan for years (maybe) and don't lots of companies get by just fine without one?

The real purpose of a business plan is to get a bunch of people on the same page about what you're trying to do and how you're going to do it. It's all about communication. Understanding a business in fullness is not either easy or quick and you're not going to do it in a one hour meeting with someone new. You might not even have a complete agreement or understanding with your own partners. The business plan forces you to write it all down in a semi-formal document and so it forces you to think clearly and communicate clearly all of the business ideas running around inside your skull.

This is good for two reasons. One, because you might discover holes and fill them in (I know I did). And two, because the next time you meet a potential partner, or investor, you can leave them with a copy of the business plan and feel confident that they will be able to read it and understand what your business is all about.

Now in my opinion, 99.9% of the "sample" business plans out there are crap. In fact I've even read "real" business plans and thought some of them were crap too. My biggest problem was finding a good reference against which to benchmark my plan. Finally I found a good source though.

It's MIT 15.975: The Nuts and Bolts of Business Plans and everything is available online . Rock on, OpenCourseWare!

The key document here is the Virtual Ink business plan . This is not a sample or example. This is a real business plan for a real business that is still alive today .

There's loads of good things about this business plan. You should try to emulate these:

• it's mercifully short: 24 pages!
• it was the first-runner up in MIT's 50K (1997)
• it's well written
• it uses a clear and consistent layout and order that you can copy

So basically this company has given you almost unheard-of access to their successful plan and if you're like me you'll use all their ideas of structure in your own. It's good stuff. There's also loads of supporting material on the course pages. Read all of it.

Now let's talk briefly about Financial projections . Another scary gotta-have-it. I'll talk some other day about the Dance of the Numbers but meanwhile, grab the financial template Excel file because it's set up to make things easy for you, and then read the appropriate session five slides .

Here's some more good advice from one of the MIT people on business subject (not necessarily business plans) Articles by Joseph G. Hadzima, Jr. ... pure gold every one.

In my own mind, there will someday be a day when you don't have to keep your business plan in a locked box like a jealously guarded secret. But until that day comes, thank MIT for providing such valuable resources to us all, and thank me for digging them up on the web ;-)